Baris Kabak

Ling407-Fall 2002

• As speakers of English, we know what sounds it has, and what it doesn't. In addition, we know the ways in which the sounds of our language are combined.
• Speech is continuous and a word is physically just one sound although there may be more than one sound that it is composed of.

• Speakers of foreign languages seem to us as if they run their words together:

Kiztrenistasyonundantaksiyleevegeldi. (Turkish)

Dasmädchenkammitdemtaxivombahnhofnachhause. (German)

Thegirlcamehomefromthetrainstationbytaxi. (English)

• No two speakers ever say the same thing identically (rate, pitch, volume, tempo) differences.
• As part of our mental grammar, however, we know each individual sound in a word, and we have no difficulty in segmenting the continuous sounds. Our linguistic knowledge also makes it possible to ignore non-linguistic differences.
• All of these abilities do not depend on our knowledge about spelling.

• Even after 11 years at school barely 1/2 of all English speakers become confident spellers. Italian children can spell accurately after just 2 years at school. Italy has only half as many dyslexics as England.
• English speaking adults always come near the bottom in international studies on literacy.
• Denmark (Danish) and Sweden (Swedish) have very similar languages. Sweden updated its spelling in the last century. Danish didn't. Swedish spellers always come near the top in all international comparisons on standards of literacy, Danish spellers near the bottom.
• At least 3500 common words in English do not follow the basic English spelling patterns. German: 800; Spanish 600 and Italian: merely 400*.

• Dyslexia is a condition in which, for no independent reason, such as lack of education, someonehas serious difficulty in reading. (from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics)
• Why do about twice as many people fit the definition of dyslexic in the US as in Italy? Why is dyslexia more prevalent in some countries (England and France) than others ? Paulesu, et al. (2001) Science 291: 2165-2167.
• Certain languages expose the disorder while others allow dyslexics to compensate?
• Recent research used positron emission tomography scans to observe brain activity in British, French, and Italian university students while they read.
• Regardless of language people with symptoms of dyslexia showed less neural activity in a part of the brain that's vital for reading.
• This suggests that English speakers are especially prone to manifest dyslexia simply because their language is so complex and tricky.

 One sound -> different letters

 Single sound -> a combination of letters

Single letter-more than one sound

Examine the vowels represented with the bold underlined graphemes below. Compare the ones in the left column with the ones in the right? On which syllable is the word stress? Can you see a pattern as to why the consonants are doubled in the left column?

Some 1000 common words contradict the basic rule

1. doubled letters after unstressed vowels, 

annoy, apply, attract, correct, oppose, travelled

2. Several words fail to double a consonant after a short stressed vowel: 

• In addition to mastering the basic spelling rules, learners of English have to memorize all the words which do not follow the basic rules
• Phonetic alphabets (for instance, IPA) have one symbol corresponding to one sound and one sound to one symbol. Strings of speech sounds coded in a phonetic alphabet are called transcriptions and they are represented in [ ] brackets.